Success Stories -- has Ooga-Mooga been a help to you? I'd love to hear about it. There's a new section called Success Stories, where you can share your tale. MauiTiki has already shared one -- a touching tale of love with a Mainlander Tiki Mug.

Thanks, MauiTiki! It always feels good to hear that your efforts are worthwhile.

Some more new features for Ooga-Mooga!

Mugs for Sale or Trade by UserYou can now see the mugs that just one Ooga-Mooga-er has for sale or for trade. The Mugs for Sale & for Trade links on the sidebar and at the top of the All Collections page still show mugs being offered by everybody -- but now there are shiny new links at the top of a user's Collection page (only if they're a Trader, of course), showing the number of mugs they're currently offering, and the links take you straight to 'em.

For example, here's a link that takes you straight to the mugs that I Dream of Tiki is offering for Sale:

Also -- the Mugs for Sale page loads much, much faster now, even when you're looking at everybody's mugs for sale.

Improved All Collections PageThe list of collections was getting awfully gangly, so I now have it split into pages. The snazzy new Mugs for Sale or Trade by User links have been added as new columns in the list of all collections. Another new column is a count of (and link to) the mugs that user has in his/her wishlist (per a request from ookoo lady). And the comments count now links directly to that user's comments page, too.

If a mug comes up for sale or trade on Ooga-Mooga that is also on your own personal public Wish List or private Favorites List, Ooga-Mooga now will give you a heads-up! When a match happens, a wee blinking tiki mug will appear on the starboard side (that's the right side, fer you landlubbers), telling you there's a new mug you'll probably want to check out. It looks like this:

To go with this is a new page: Wishlist Matches. It's also on the starboard side, the link is just below "Favorites". Here, you can see details and pictures for all the mugs currently being offered for sale or trade in Ooga-Mooga that are also on your own public Wish List or private Favorites List.

If you want to only be alerted about mugs on your public Wish List (and not your private Favorites List), you can set that in your Account Settings. Your private Favorites list stays private either way, though -- only you can see your Wishlist Matches.

I've already created alerts for all the mugs that are currently being offered -- a whole mess of you have got Wishlist Matches waiting for you.

I also have the ability to send you an alert via email (with the option to turn emailed alerts off, of course) -- if that's something you want, let me know. If I see lots of interest, I'll roll that out.

Faster SearchActually, Search works pretty much exactly the same as it did before... but now, the default is to search only in the name and a.k.a.s of the mug templates, rather than the entire description. That makes the search much, much, much faster. If you want to do a more thorough search, you still can -- just select "Name, AKAs and full description" when you do your search. Selecting specific things to narrow down your search can speed it up even more -- for instance, if you know that the mug you're looking for is green, select "Green" in the list of colors, or if you know it's a Tiki Farm mug, select "Tiki Farm" in the list of Manufacturers.

Tips for Photographing Your CollectionI've created a page with tips & instructions for getting great pictures of your collection! You can see it here.

And now some thank yous...

Thank you to everyone who filled out the user survey! It was an amazing help -- I got so much really useful feedback from it, and it's really repositioned my ideas about what people want to see on Ooga-Mooga, which is awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You'll see some great changes on Ooga-Mooga as a direct result of your surveys.

And I must once again thank Tiki-Kate for her help in creating mug templates -- Ooga-Mooga now has templates for nearly 2,500 mugs!

Per Request: Latest Additions to Collections!This was the most-requested new feature in the Ooga-Mooga survey, by far: the ability to see what the new additions are to someone's collection. Now, you can see at a glance what new mugs and new pictures have been added to an Ooga-Mooga collection in the past week.

How do you see this fantastic new feature? Glad you asked! Check out...

Ooga-Mooga's Revamped Home Page!Ooga-Mooga's home page used to show you a list of the five users who most recently added a new mug to their collection, and the five users who most recently added a new picture to their collection. Nice & all, but not nearly as useful as it could have been:

The two lists differed a bit, but only a bit, so it was kind of redundant

There's enough traffic on Ooga-Mooga these days that only showing five users made it hard to keep up with the new additions

Worst of all -- these links only took you to that person's collection, it didn't actually show you what was new; sifting through someone's entire collection to try to spot the new mugs & pictures was practically impossible

Ahhhh... that's much better!

The new Additions to Collections shows:

The entire list of users who have made new additions to their collections in the past week, instead of just the five most recent users

The link on their name still takes you to their entire collection

The link on "new mugs" takes you to a page showing you all their new mugs

The link on "new pictures" takes you to a page showing you all their new pictures

I also want to add these Latest Additions links on your Collection pages, but I'm going to think a bit longer about how to best incorporate it into the page -- that page could also use a bit of an overhaul.

But that's not all! While I was at it, I also improved the latest comments:

It now shows the ten most recent comments (instead of five), and instead of just giving you a link to the user who got the comment, it shows you who made the comment, and gives you a link right to the mug that got commented on. Keen!

Now that there's a little bit more info there on the front page, there's room to show more than just one picture from the Collection of the Day, so now it shows three pictures. Snazzy!

I'm so totally in love with this new setup, and I think you will be, too. If you've got any questions or comments, lemme have 'em!

Previously, Ooga-Mooga was piggy-backing on Tiki Central's Personal Message system. Starting today, Ooga-Mooga has its own, separate message system. You can find the link to the Messages section on the right-hand "My Collection" side of Ooga-Mooga. Ooga-Mooga can send you an email alert when you have a new message (you can turn that off in Account Settings -- the default setting is on).

Why the change? While Tiki Central & Ooga-Mooga's symbiotic relationship has been all kinds of awesome, it's super-confusing for new Ooga-Mooga users. More and more, these new Ooga-Mooga users are also totally new to Tiki Central. Figuring out one rather massive new site is hard enough, but asking new Ooga-Mooga-ers to figure out two massive sites at once is just too much. It's a very happy mire to get caught in, to be sure, but it's a mire nonetheless. So, I'm working to detangle Ooga-Mooga and Tiki Central a bit.

There's a couple little perks with the new system: if you're sending a message about a mug that's for sale or for trade, then a thumbnail of the mug comes along with that new message, so you can see at a glance in your inbox which messages are about which mugs. Also, along with the email alerts of new messages, Ooga-Mooga can send you email alerts when one of the mugs on your Wish List has matched with a mug that has just come up for sale or for trade on Ooga-Mooga.

It's fresh off the presses, so please feel free to pinch & poke it and tell me what you think. I'll probably be adding a few small little tweaks over the next day or so.

Last night, I rolled out another new feature, and a bunch of folks have already found it and used it -- you can add a Profile, including a snappy lil' picture of yourself! Here's an example, it shows what ScarabaTiki's Collection page looks like now (I think his pic is really boss):

In addition to the picture, you can also add where you're from, what your interests are, and a link to your personal website. It's all in Account Settings. The profile pics also show up on all your comments, and on all your Messages.